NecroCore

GAME INFO

CONTRIBUTIONS

DESIGN GOALS

Create a fast paced first person shooter that combines elements from old-school retro shooters with the mobility and ability management of modern shooters.

Utilize elements from rogue-lites such as acquiring perks and weapons from random drops to create a replayable experience.

Create a game that appeals to my personal interests in Sci-Fi, Lovecraftian creatures, and grungy/emo art.

THE UNITY PROTOTYPE

First iteration of the project was created as a passion project in a little under a month inside of unity. This version of the project contained 7 weapons, 4 enemy types, 4 abilities,1 boss at the end, a variety of movement options, and a couple rooms and hallways to create combat scenarios.
The 7 weapons included 4 standard weapons and 3 unique weapons. The unique weapons came with an inherit perk to encourage unique playstyles/tools. This included an automatic shotgun, a sniper rifle that would stun enemies, and a machine gun that would instantly reload when killing an enemy. The goal was to create a diverse range of weapons that catered to different playstyles, while experimenting with unique mechanics to add depth and variety to gunplay and combat.
For the abilities I wanted to create and show off different elements and status affects to provide different means of approaching combat. Abilities includes a fireball that would explode on impact and burn targets dealing damage over time, an ice shard that would crash down on enemies and freeze them for a limited time, an electric grapple that would pull enemies towards you, and lastly a personal barricade to give players a more defensive option.
Enemies included a basic melee enemy with 3 variants of ranged enemies, and a very simple boss that would remain stationary while firing projectiles towards the player.

PROTOTYPE CONCLUSION

Overall this prototype was a quick and rough way to try and implement as many ideas and features into the initial idea for the game to see what worked and what didn't. This would provide some invaluable feedback which would greatly help the next iteration of the game in Unreal Engine. Almost every mechanic or idea would go on to be streamlined, altered, and improved thanks to this protoype.

THE SWITCH TO UNREAL ENGINE

Switching to unreal engine allowed me to build the game from the ground up based on feedback and was a nice excuse to try my hand at learning to develop in Unreal Engine.
Besides including actual art and moving away from greyboxes, just about every system saw a massive design change.

WEAPONS

One of the biggest changes from the prototype is that instead of having standard weapons with unique variants, weapons were redesigned to instead have more personality and character outright. Each weapon instead focuses on behaving drastically different from each other, and the player's equipped ability is instead attached to the weapon to help enforce the weapon's playstyle.
Examples include the revolver, which features an intrinsic active ability that slows time and enhances headshot damage, fully embracing its gunslinger fantasy. Another example is the machine gun, which applies burn damage and includes a grenade-throwing ability, reinforcing its jack-of-all-trades soldier archetype.
The change in philosophy to how each weapon would be designed helped greatly to bring more personality out of the individual guns.

ENEMIES

Feedback on the enemies from the prototype was they didn't have any specific roles in combat that would force the player to prioritize different enemies.
I decided to focus on 4 main enemy types. The first enemy type was a basic melee enemy that would rush the player and attempt to keep pressure on them. The next were flying sentries, they had much less health but moved much more sporadically and would try to overwhelm the player by firing projectiles from the air. The most dangerous enemy type were the grounded ranged variants who would fire 3 projectiles in a burst and would occasionally dash left or right if the player was aiming towards them. The last enemy type was a healer who would float around and provide constant health regeneration to all enemies around them. In the end we had a variety of different enemies that focused on providing the player with unique obstacles in combat.
The last major addition to the enemies were the inclusion of "Chosen Enemies". These were unique and "Elite" variants of the standard enemies who came equipped with a barrier that would reduce bullet damage and would give the enemy an extra layer of health. These enemy were designed to give the players a reason to be required to engage with the gun's active abilities.

PLAYER MOVEMENT

In comparison from the prototype I focused on removing some unnecessary movement features. I tried experimenting with double jumping and wall-running but found that these features didn't actually benefit the pacing of the game.
Instead I focused on having movement that focused more on fast-paced grounded gameplay with a single jump and a directional dash. For me this was a great lesson in identifying bloated features that are harmful to the overall pacing and gameplay.

ABILITIES AND STATUS EFFECTS

Instead of giving the player 4 abilities, abilities were made to be tied to each weapon and only one ability would be active at a time. (Player's are allowed to hold two weapons). This helped to streamline abilities as to not overwhelm the player, and give the player choice over what ability they want equipped at a time. Abilities were also tied to a mana system instead of a cooldown, with each kill returning mana to the player to try and create additional synergy to the ability and gunplay.
More emphasis was also put on more defensive and utility skills. (3 skills were for damage and 3 for utility). This decision was made to try and make sure that each ability complimented the playstyle of the weapon its attached too.
The last major change was removing the frost status effect and instead focusing on burn and shock. Burn would still be a damage over time effect and shock would now simply stun an enemy in place and prevent them from attacking.

CONCLUSION

Overall this was one of my personal favorite projects to work on. It was a project that I really felt like I was able to put my own personality into and really allowed me to grow alongside the project as constant feedback and iteration from peers and professors allowed me to adapt and continue to build on top of the foundation.